


Listen to Me, Sirius Black

by MalloryMobius



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 17 again - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Department of Mysteries, F/M, Fix-It, Good!peter pettigrew, M/M, Marauders, Other, Time Travel, behind the veils
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:06:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalloryMobius/pseuds/MalloryMobius
Summary: He keeps falling, away from the horizontal stage of 1996, down a vertical staircase (of time). There is a man waiting at the bottom of the stairs, an acquaintance of his. The man is calling his name. “Sirius! Sirius wake up you dipshit!”
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	1. June，1996

The spell hit him hard and precise in the chest, where his heart had been a second ago throbbing ever so vigorously in months, years maybe, the velocity and accuracy not unlike that of the muggle weapons Remus told him (and the others) about back when they’re teenagers, and later in the dull adult life when everything had faded by a shade or two. There might be scars, thought Sirius, had it been a bullet of an M1191, the wound would be a round one, a tunnel of torn-apart flesh and bones making way for copper and iron, and tyranny and insularity. He taunted idea of dying, depicting in mind how they’d claim his body and recognize an injury of the very shape, a slightly crooked full comma for a black comedy that was his life. Sirius Black retired from the stage, with bows, in thunderous applause.

The fall followed, instead of a shattered skull or a broken arm, is nothing he’s expected. Down he falls, through a veil, through a room of mirrors, through a corridor with curtains on both sides, behind which laughter hides. He keeps falling, away from the horizontal stage of 1996, down a vertical staircase. There is a man waiting at the bottom of the stairs, an acquaintance of his. The man is calling his name. “Sirius! Sirius wake up you dipshit!”

The world turns upside down in one swift whirl. Sirius Black surfaces to patches of sunlight on the wall, scarlet duvets tangling in four-poster bed, and a frowning Remus Lupin-Merlin does he look young (and damn hot)-to 1977, Hogwarts, sixth grade, to be 17 again.

“What have I done now.” He asks himself, looking around and adjusting to the bizarrely endearing surroundings, before it dawns on him that he’s voiced his thought aloud, in Remus’s presence.

“Indeed.” The other man replies gravely, an alarming vibrato in his words. Sirius notices that he’s holding back his temper because he’s picking at his thumb. Remus picks at his scabs whenever he lies, or when he’s nervous, or when he’s struggling to ** _act normal_**. He prefers to attribute these emotional meltdowns (failed self-control) to being a werewolf. Sirius, being Sirius, good-naturedly disagrees by saying the outbursts (healthy release) are mere side-effect of being a teenager.

“Better tell James.” Mumbled Remus. Without a single look at Sirius, he storms away to poke his head outside the door and declares: “He’s got his fat arse back. Please quit doing the definitely-not-a-funeral ritual now. It isn’t soothing me in the very least.”

A dramatic sigh. Sirius holds his breath.

“Thank Dumbledore’s razor collection. He hasn’t finished his will yet.”

“He’s broke.”

“Yeah but we’ll dig out something eventually.”

“And Remy we’re so sorry for his insufferable resilience.”

“Absolute disgust.”

His heart vaults up and screams hysterically as the pair of figures shows up at his bedside, Peter who is chubby and skittish and evasive（Sick anger surges in his chest and he wants to get to his feet and choke the scum to death）, and there James is, with his headful of ruffled hair, slant glasses, his iconic mischievous smirk which has Sirius’s rage transmuted into a jumble of blinding joy at one glance, makes him want to dance for merriment and gratitude, reminds him that none has yet to happen, and everything awaits to be changed.

He lies beneath three pairs of searching eyes, dazed, unbelieving, and tells his 17 year-old body: “Now you listen to me, Sirius Black.”


	2. November 3rd，1995

When they discussed the matter of Peter’s betrayal, much, much later after the escape, on Sirius’s 35th birthday-he never made it to 36 and the years before 35 were not exactly beds of roses (Not that he’d cared, it was Remus who insisted on the cake)-it was in a slipshod, drunken fashion, over far more Fire Whiskey than appropriate even by Sirius’s standards.

“But why?” Remus had asked(accused), to which Sirius’s throat seized up, his mouth dry.

“Because I’m an idiot.” He told him so and it was true.

“Also because Pete’s always been a little piece of shit.”

“Yeah. That too.”

He remembered the day by scraps of conversations like this. He remembered weaving through jangling bottles strewn across the floor to get even more alcohol from the kitchen cupboard (and literally every corner Kreacher’d put his claws upon that they could come up with). Dumbledore’d not spared them the mercy of magic by then. He remembered transforming into padfoot to put his head in Remus’s lap, Remus leaning down to press his mouth to the damp dog nose, and it was the closest thing to his better dream that he could ever wished for in this life, dreams he’d had when pinned (by thirst, by anemia, by fear, by regret) on the slate floor in the grim cell of Azkaban, in a displaced life between exotic countries, where he ate birds alive and licked blood (greedily) from everything and anything, his pointy ears developing rapid sensitivity to the clangs and clicks of a rifle (It takes 23 days to form a habit and habits die hard.)

Mostly he dreamt about long, languid summer afternoons and wet, fitful kisses exchanged under an invisibility cloak, about Remus sucking him off in the back of a greenhouse, kneecaps digging into fragrant soil, about shagging Remus down the cellar of Honey Dukes, against shelves loaded with boxes of chocolate frogs and Fizzing Whizbees. At some point, even in this hazy delirium, he’d come to the revelation that such intimacy was something they could’ve enjoyed and marveled at but never did, that there would always be **_the incident_** standing in the way from Christmas 1976 to status quo, the intersection where an ominous rift- it had crept in for some time now- expanded (like a plague). Before he knew it, divergence had been made and Peter Pettigrew was venturing too far to come back.

The next day Remus woke up in his armchair, and cursed and shrieked at the ostentatious pile of mice gleefully organized by the fireplace, to which Padfoot reacted incredibly smug and Sirius felt like he was so ready to be spoiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot tell you how embarassed I am on finding I got most of the chronicle wrong...


	3. Briefly After the Landing

“I’m still mad.”

“Me too.”

“Me three.”

“Oh really? Says the pair of morons who are unusually enthusiastic about martyring their lives?”

“Now that’s nonsense. Pete’s got the knot.”

“Safe and secure.”

“But you could’ve been spotted! And what’s worse, expelled!”

“Except we’re standing here talking to you and offering sweet sweet care to our absolutely not-caring friend.”

“In fact the biggest problem might be overkills of James’s … whoever she is.”

“Speaking of which, I’ve heard of no babbling, no excusing and not even a sarcastic complaint so far. It’s kind of bothering me.”

“You reckon we should send him to Pomphrey, Remus?

“I OBJECT!”

“Objection denied. His head is at your disposal, sir Lupin. Wait, who’s talking?”

“Sirius you can talk! Say Dada! Dada! That’s right it’s me! Yeeees! Pete I can only be so proud.”

“He’s still going.” Remus deadpans, “to make amends.”

And because Sirius doesn’t trust himself to not blurt out such comments as “I got you this time Pete.” or “James just go marry that hell of a girl already.” or “Can I fuck you please Remus Lupin?”，he meekly obeys and heads to the infirmary, escorted by James, whose vocabulary has been reduced to three words ( **you** , **should** , **really** , in different sequences and combinations with various tones) like a broken recorder, and Peter, who is apparently bracing himself for another fight, while all the way making immensely intense eye contact with the brown-haired, pale-looking boy striding determinedly on his left. Remus, to Sirius’s great disappointment, is not impressed.

“Behold, you gorgeous wolfly man. I’m gonna make you fall in love with me all over again.”

Hogwarts hospital wings has never been a foreign place to the most troublesome boys in a century. Nevertheless, when James, Sirius, Remus and Peter stand in awkward silence beside the sick bed of one vaguely conscious Severus Snape, and shuffled and swayed, rooting for something (anything) in vain to break the reticence, the tranquil essence of lemony air fresher and snow-white bed sheet irrevocably loses some of its charm.

“So, what is it you want?” Snape challenges skeptically.

Sirius immediately decides that making amend is ten times harder than learning to become an animagus or breaking the prison of Azkaban or talking sense into a teenage boy or all of them combined. What’s worse, Remus has turned just in time to **look** at him, scrutinizing him as if Sirius is his 3rd-year Herbology project (It’s about Mandrakes and it’s no good memory). Since Sirius Black is a man of all the hearts and heads, he wastes no time barking back:

“YOU. NOT. DEAD.”


	4. Christmas, 1976

That there was an owl pecking all over his face was the first thing he noticed that morning. Sirius looked down to find a howler, already smoking a little, had been dropped at the end of his bed. The only thing preventing it from explosion must be the half-melted snow which was, for the moment, not only destroying his laundry, but also sabotaging the pile of homework blown to the open window by the freezing December wind. He tossed on his robe, remembering it was supposed to be Christmas, more or less. So be it. He had in fact spent the last four December 25ths idly eating himself oblivious down the kitchen of Hogwarts, and the days before that manufacturing riots on mother’s banquet through elaborate effort. His friends had volunteered to stay with him now that Sirius’s “being kicked out of the Black family” went legit, but were shooed away when he revealed that he had no intention in breaking anyone’s parents’ hearts by depriving them of their precious babies. All three of them were struck ill, and did not insist. They were too kind to force him into some subject of charity.

He considered his slippers for a second. Given their current state of soak, he tiptoed barefoot to Peter’s bed while waving his hands to the windows, which shut themselves in one neat “bang”. Better. He knelt down and pried up the loosen floorboard under Pete’s bed. Now that he was pretty sure he wouldn’t starve to death, Sirius called out in a yawn: “Acio Howler.”

“MORNING SUSHINE! ” James’ voice exclaimed. “I’VE GOT GOOD NEWS!”

“Snivellus got murdered?” Sirius gulped down his second serving of warm butter beer hopefully. He made a mental note to compliment Pete’s genius in food preservation charms.

“And It’s way better than anything Snape related, I know what’s in your head mate, trust me. GET DRESSED. CHOP CHOP.I’M PICKING YOU UP AT PRECISELY ——”

At what time James would come to pick him up Sirius would never know. The letter impatiently shredded itself and formed a paper downpour above his head. Nor did Sirius particularly care about such trivia because he was too busy protecting his beer from the falling ash. He managed to make himself presentable and shove all the candy wrappers into his pockets by the time James arrived anyways.

The Potters turned out to be superb. Pleasant food. Handcrafted decorations. Generally non-alcoholic beverages. A kitchen too small for four people and two dogs. Celestina Warbeck humming Christmas Carols on the radio. If Sirius was a bit drunk and mistakenly called Mrs. Potter “Mum” once or twice while passing the pepper, he blamed the eggnog instead of the dreamy cheerfulness overflowing cinnamon-scented air for it.

“So, how’s the turkey, Sirius?” Mr. Potter asked over dinner.

James rolled his eyes, “Dad, Sirius’s posh. He’d probably have peacock for Christmas.”

“I think it’s amazing.” Sirius said sincerely.

“O cut it out already you brutal peacock eater.”

He refused their inviting him to stay over politely, not wanting to push it too far. And James probably knew him better than he did, because before he stepped into the fireplace, James pulled him aside and whispered, all serious: “You know Pete and I love you right? And there’s Remus, in his own peculiar ways.”

“Hey what’s that supposed to mean?”

James quirked an eyebrow, and winked: “Let’s all hope you find out one day, shall we?”

He handed him the present boxes and shouted: “Merry Christmas, Sirius Black.”

It was a two-way mirror. The sentimental bastard. And Pete’s food tray. (He found out in a note that Pete had learnt that spell for him, well at least partly.) And Remus’ leather jacket. (which was a little oversized by then, but he was sure he’d grow into it.) I would die for them, thought Sirius. No, scratch that. I would live for them.

I would live for them, fearfully and wonderfully.


End file.
